Vehicle lighting systems, and in particular headlamp systems, are subject to a variety of regulatory requirements which define permitted beam patterns, illumination levels, etc. While designing lighting systems which meet these requirements can be challenging, the problem is further exacerbated when the designed system will be used in two or more jurisdictions with different regulations and must meet different regulatory requirements. Further, in some cases the lighting system must meet different requirements even when only used in a single regulatory jurisdiction. For example, some ECE regulations depend upon whether the vehicle is operated in a Right Hand Drive (RHD) country or a Left Hand Drive (LHD) country and vehicles sold within the member countries of the European Community must be able to meet their local requirements without offending the requirements of the other jurisdictions.
To deal with the issue of a LHD car operating in a RHD country (or vice versa), it is known to provide a “Tourist Mode” switch for the vehicle's lighting systems. When a vehicle from a RHD country visits a LHD country, the driver will activate the switch which will then result in a shield being deployed within the headlamp to block inappropriate lighting which would otherwise blind approaching drivers, etc. While the vehicle lighting system typically does not meet the regulatory requirements when operating in Tourist mode, the resulting lighting patterns are less offensive than the unaltered patterns and this type of operation is generally tolerated. In particular, the Vienna Convention On Road Traffic 1968 permits this type of operation.
While such Tourist Mode systems can deal with different regulatory requirements in a permitted manner, they do suffer from disadvantages, including the fact that the switch must be manually operated by the driver, and is thus subject to being activated at inappropriate times (i.e.—while still in the home regulatory environment), failing to be activated when appropriate (i.e.—failing to activate Tourist Mode when visiting a LHD country from a RHD country, etc.) and results in an increased manufacturing expense for the lighting system and/or additional difficulty in creating a regulatory compliant lighting system design